Create, Loot And Share

The heading of this commentary represents the morally-bankrupt occupation of some public office holders today. Literally stuck in this moral morass, we are on the verge of losing our place in the comity of decent nations where principles and values hold sway.

Creating, looting and sharing, important words which appeared profoundly in the landmark judgment of the Waterville case a few days ago, are politically unacceptable practices under dispensations where principles and values define the conduct of public office holders.

Even in criminal gangs such as the mafia there are principles which members adhere to for the sake of honour. As a matter of principle, for instance, members of the mafia must follow a laid-down code when they are entrapped in the mesh of the law regardless of the consequences of such action.

This critical attribute is gradually ebbing away from our body-politic endangering unduly our existence as a nation deserving of international respect.

It is intriguing how political office holders collude and connive with public servants to steal with impunity from state coffers. The country has been rendered rudderless as financial mismanagement straddles public office.

Without accountability, compass public servants appear to have been given a carte blanche to do as they please with the national purse, as reckless payments to private sector players for no work done becomes the order of the political dispensation.

The clash between self and public interests remains a defining issue in our desire to run a decent government in which the interest of the nation overshadows the individual politician's.

We were almost losing hope in the fate of the country's ability to fight the cankerworm of public purse recklessness and graft until the heart-warming Waterville judgment of a few days ago.

The judiciary has, by its action, given a fresh whiff of life to an otherwise moribund state of morality in the country where public office thievery is not an aberration.

Let the bench do justice regardless of whose ox is gored, that should be the spirit. After all, justice, it is said, must be done even if the sky will fall. In our case, the sky is not even falling so why should we fold our arms as the public purse is subjected to the rape of heartless and unscrupulous thieves who have no respect for dignity and love for country.

Names have popped up who made the rape possible but without a shame box, such persons would want to hold on to their appointments avoiding the exits of their offices.

Let those who had any association with this classic rip-off be showed the exit, now.

We wish to join the chorus of those showering plaudits on the lone Ghanaian who championed the cause of the nation in the courtroom.